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Forged in flame, burning and glowing and inhuman, Zoya twists in her sleep, a star trapped beneath her skin, incinerating her from the inside out. She is falling and flying at once, soaring through galaxies with nothing at her fingertips but the pure, legendary power that awaits anxiously at her breastbone. It writhes, rising like an ancient beast, untamable, deadly, forsworn to riddle the galaxy with strife and destruction.
But someone is calling her name, someone a thousand twisting, swirling, effervescent cosmoses away, someone who feels of gentle warmth and a cool rippling sea and something she can only describe as home. She reaches out, wondering at this presence, this softly glowing star, sensing a quietness, a tranquility, and a smooth determination in a world of anger and annihilation. The fire raging in her chest eases, retreating into her bones to lie dormant for just a little longer, and her eyes flutter, finding herself lying in the Razor Crest, Din leaning over her.
"Zoya," he's saying, touching her shoulder gently but shaking it enough that she can feel the apprehension wreathed though his body and his words. "Zoya, sarad, wake up. Please."
Her mouth moves soundlessly, and she coughs, pushing herself upright, eyes opening fully, the rebirth of a galaxy. Her tongue tastes of ash, and her voice is just as rough and flaking when she asks, "What?", as if she hasn't been dreaming of flame and annihilation, hasn't been scorching from the inside out, bones made of stardust and aching blood.
"Are you okay?"
Zoya nods, and even the small movement hurts. Her whole body feels hyperaware, every single brush of her clothing against her skin is an irritant; every gust of cool wind through the Razor Crest's broken wall feels like rough metal grating across her face. The same sensitivity from her dream, carried over into the waking world. It feels wrong, like trying to cram a rifle into a pistol-sized holster.
Sensing his concern rising with every second longer she remains silent, Zoya forces her lips to turn up. "Just a weird dream, is all."
"You were burning up," he tells her, concerned. "I couldn't get you to wake up." A pause, and then: "I was worried."
Zoya remembers the voice that cut through the void, reached her through a hurricane of flame. Din. You brought me home, she wants to say, but her tongue feels coated in sand and she coughs again, pushing a hand to her chest as the grains scour her throat.
"Are you okay?" he says again, and one of his gloves brushes the side of her neck, feeling like a harsh scrape, rough gravel on silk.
